3 out of 5

Label: Joyful Noise Recordings

Produced by: Adam “Dono” Donavan (recorded by)

King Wizard and the Lizard Gizzard Aussie associates Tropical Fuck Storm find themselves operating in a similar vein as the prolific jammers: Goody Goody Gumdrops is a guise; an attitude adopted for the purpose of a recording, spurring new – but familiar – sounds. KGLW has done this in the manner of albums focused around tunings or concepts; GGG is a short film to which this is a soundtrack, described on the bandcamp as “part live performance, part documentary, part absurdist comedy … their version of “Magical Mystery Tour.””

Now, on the surface, when you have talented, creative folk – and the members of TFS I’d surely include in that – these guises can be great, whether directly or indirectly, the latter keeping the wheels spinning for future projects. But for every hit using this approach can come some misses, and Goody Goody is not that, but it isn’t exactly on target.

Another thing to zero in on, perhaps, is this being a soundtrack. This is kind of a guise itself, I suppose, if you want to stink up whatever framework I’m going for here, but I’ll take a step back from that and just look to when bands which haven’t traditionally done “score” work are assigned to be the backing for a film. Now, this is more along the lines of the Beatles reference in that it’s a film starring the band, but from my sampling of band/movie albums, it’s often at least a slight mismatch, requiring a different “purpose” for the music; bands will end up sounding like cover versions of themselves.

And that’s sort of where we are with Goody Goody Gumdrops: to my ears, the band shifts through three different approximate styles – those are the guises – while also kind of sounding like a group trying to approximate TFS. It’s an interesting listen! And absolutely not without some excellent freakout jams, with one of those guises happening to be this TFS cover group playing legit TFS songs. For those that followed Gareth Liddard to Springtime, I feel like we get to see some of that freeform work here – the opening two tracks operate like solo jams for Gaz and Fi, with Fi’s song kind of a Deep Sea Diver new wave bop (both of these have some fun, skronky wiggles towards their conclusions); and the midsection makes the connection back to TFS touring with Modest Mouse, who I’ll six degrees connect to Built To Spill – Braindrops, The Greatest Story Ever Told and You Let My Tyres Down are all alt-rock Neil Young-ish affairs. Bumma Singer feels closest to a legit Fuck Storm song, following its riffs down wild alleys with Liddard and crew vamping maniacally, while Paradise is a slow-burn of a similar caliber. Finally, checking the final box on the whole soundtrack / guise thing, we get a coda / credits / outro track: a nonsensical hoe-down ditty with a tongue twister title.